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technically brilliant to gloriously cheesy fun.

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The best way to determine how much you may like certain music is to listen to it yourself.

Slayer: "World Painted Blood" The dark lords released their fourteenth album last year (if you count Decade of Aggression) and it is undoubtedly one of Slayer's finest; why you ask? This marks their second outing this decade with original drummer Dave Lombardo, who helped create some of the most important metal anthems in history: Raining Blood, Hell Awaits, etc. and his frantic yet calculated style is what gives Slayer records their characteristic "tension". Trademark songs like "Psychopathy Red", and "Unit 731" recall classic eighties-era thrash metal, the sound that Slayer helped to create. More modern elements of their sound such as down-tuned guitars and groove-oriented drums can be heard on "Beauty Through Order" and the albums title track, which describes the Mayan's doomsday predictions for 2012. Kerry King has said in recent interviews that the band was more comfortable working with producer Greg Fidelman on this record than Josh Abraham, who produced 2006's "Christ Illusion" and that kind of creative freedom can be heard all over this record. What you get from "World Painted Blood" is a great mixture of the old and new Slayer styles and a band working at its maximum creative potential. It's good clean family fun, and I would recommend it to any Slayerite.